Journal - The Holidays Begin

The week of Thanksgiving was kind of a long one. I worked full 8 hour shifts Tuesday through Saturday and a 5 hour shift on Sunday making it my longest week at Walmart to date. Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty busy as expected with lots of people doing their last minute shopping for Thanksgiving.

Thursday was pretty slow, also as expected. It was kind of an interesting day to work though. Us cart pushers carry walkie-talkies for when they need to call us in for carry-outs and there was lots of chatter and buzz all day about he Black Friday preparations. Since it was slow I got to go in and walk through the store a little bit now and then and it was interesting to watch some of the preparations. They moved lots of the usual racks of goods, mostly clothing, out of the store and put them outside in the lawn and garden area which was by this time empty. So there were huge areas of the store that were completely empty in preparation of the special sale items that would be moving in later on. As I understand it, the big empty areas would contain special sale items with plenty of extra space for queue lines for those wanting that particular item. I only worked until 5pm that day so I didn’t get to see very much of the sale items being moved in. Walmart began Black Friday at 8pm Thursday night so I was gone before the rush began.

Then it was Black Friday. I thought this would be a terribly busy and miserable day, but as it turned out I was wrong. Since the sales all took place during the night, it was pretty much over with by the time I came in at 8am Friday morning. The sale items were gone and all the regular merchandise had been returned to its proper places.

Saturday also turned out to be a bit on the slow side, another surprise. I guess everyone got their shopping done on Friday and decided to stay home. Saturday is usually the busiest day by far.

Then I had my short day on Sunday and was ready for a day off on Monday. It was a rough week even though several of the days I worked were slow. My legs, which have been toughening up and doing pretty well were definitely ready for a rest.

On the week after Thanksgiving I returned to my usual schedule of about 32 hours. That would have seemed like a nice break after the busy week of Thanksgiving, but I started getting sick early in the week. Tuesday and Wednesday were short days but I wasn’t feeling very well at all. By this time I knew that I had a sinus infection based on my symptoms. I had Thursday off and still wasn’t feeling well. I was starting to try and figure out when I could make a visit to the doctor but on Friday and Saturday I started feeling much better and decided it wouldn’t be necessary.

On Sunday I had a much needed and anticipated day off. My sinuses were feeling fine by now but I woke up with some soreness in my left eye, that’s the one I can’t see out of. I didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t really painful, just sore.

More on this later.

Matthew 11:28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ESV

James 1:2-3 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.